Franco Bellucci, born in Livorno in 1945, began to create objects at the end of the 1970s, thus channeling his destructive impulses and reconciling them - through the frequent use of toys - with the childhood condition to which encephalitis l 'had assigned from an early age. Deprived of speech, he then began to tirelessly produce, by hybridization, objects that we perceive sometimes as transitional, sometimes as fetishes.

With Franco Bellucci, if the idea of reconstruction, even of repair dear to Kader Attia is essential in the first place, it cannot be enough when one knows the process of elaboration of his works. Indeed, how not to be seized by the unchanging ritual of Bellucci, holding tight against his belly the objects which he binds, twists, kneads, bruises and recomposes.

If we consider for a moment that the belly is perceived by certain Eastern and Greek philosophies as the seat of the soul or, at the very least, of the epithumia - desire, envy - we can imagine what vital energy primordial could animate these creations. If, moreover, this operation is orphaned by all speech, all speech, but it is carried out to the rhythm of the guttural scansion, of Bellucci's hoarse breath, one cannot help invoking the parallel with certain shamanic rituals.

Unlike Judith Scott, spider weaver of cocoons intended to hide objects, or Pascal Tassini, exploring the proliferating possibilities of knots, Franco Bellucci reveals, sublimates and resuscitates. By creating chimeras, he metaphorizes his fight against fragmentation while giving his objects an absolute power of recreation. “Beautiful as the chance meeting, on a dissection table, of a sewing machine and an umbrella” (Comte de Lautréamont, Les Chants de Maldoror).

His work was part, in 2013, of "Banditi dell'arte" at the Halle Saint Pierre, in Paris, then benefited from a monographic exhibition at the MAD in Liège in 2014-2015, while a wall was dedicated to him at the same time at the Maison rouge, in Paris, on the occasion of the exhibition “art brut, collection Bruno Decharme”. this is - under the curatorship of Gustavo Giacosa - his first gallery exhibition.